Menagerie - Martin Day [26]
'Sounds like a passable side exhibit. And?'
'There's an auction this afternoon. We might find you some deformed creature . . . Or perhaps some cheap whore who's not paid her fines.'
'Well, you dirty old dog,' said Diseaeda. 'We all live in hope.'
'We'll make a good team, Cosmae,' announced Jamie, pushing his plate across the table. The young man had brought Jamie to a lodging house, saying that he dared not return to his master.
Cosmae held his head in his hands. 'Maybe.'
'Come on, man,' said Jamie, shaking the boy by the shoulders. 'We got around that guard, didn't we?'
'But the girl I'm looking for wasn't there. Defrabax will kill me if I don't get that key back.'
'Where do you think she is?'
'In the castle. I had hoped that they'd finished questioning her and sent her back to the guards.'
'I'm sure that's where the Doctor will be as well,' said Jamie.
'But we'll never get in there,' said Cosmae.
'Why?'
'Because it's the castle of the Knights of Kuabris. What more do you need to know?'
'I'm a traveller,' said Jamie. 'Tell me more about the knights.'
Cosmae couldn't take his eyes off the castle, framed through the stone window. 'They protect us,' said Cosmae.
'At least, that's what they claim. They uphold our laws, intercede for us in prayer, and wrestle with problems of justice and morality.' There was a slight mocking lilt to his voice.
'Presbyters with claymores,' said Jamie, but Cosmae didn't hear him.
'They are only interested in the present, the here and now.
For them the past is gone, and the future is unknown. We are to seek the Higher as best we can from moment to moment.'
'Is that why you fear them?'
'Of course not,' snorted Cosmae. 'Religious twaddle. At least, that's what my master says, and I've no reason to doubt him.'
'Then why?'
'Something happens when you become a knight. You see men — kind and gentle men — initiated into the ways of Kuabris, and they are never the same again.'
'The Doctor would call that brainwashing,' said Jamie.
Cosmae stared blankly for a moment, and then continued.
'Day by day they simply surrender to their worst instincts. It is only to be expected, I suppose.'
'So far,' noted Jamie, 'you've described nothing more than evil men with swords. If you saw some of the things that the Doctor has come up against —'
'But it's the potential power of the knights that frightens me,' interrupted Cosmae. 'They have centuries of learning, which they vigorously destroy. They have dark secrets and powers far beyond even my master. By their destruction of knowledge and their consumption of the secret workings of the world, they become stronger and stronger.' Cosmae looked Jamie straight in the eye, his pupils dilated. 'It is the souls of the knights that I most fear.'
Zoe awoke with a sinking feeling in her stomach that was becoming all too familiar. Where once the sounds of her own city coming to life had woken her, today she came to because she could no longer block out the stink of the cell and the harsh pressure on her neck and spine. Her travels with the Doctor made her long for comfortable beds and people who were actually pleased to see her. She'd finally nagged the Doctor into installing some sort of orthopedic bed in her room in the TARDIS, but just at the moment she'd settle for a pillow. And some air freshener.
The weak light filtering into the room reminded her that the soldier had said she'd be sold at a market in an hour.
And that was about five hours ago. Since she'd been moved to this smaller cell she hadn't heard a single voice.
'Peasants!' she finally exclaimed, her voice ringing against the walls of rock. 'Primitive peasants!' Such an emotional response would have been frowned upon by her tutors at the Earth School of Parapsychology, but to hell with them. The logic of this particular situation was inescapable: place one young woman in some benighted, centuries-old gaol, give her zero items to help her with any escape plan that she might formulate, and the end result was a very angry, impotent prisoner.